Over 50 international scientists gathered at The Second Tsunami Symposium sponsored by The Tsunami Society to hear about recent tsunami research. Laboratory tsunami landslide generators developed in Switzerland in the last few years now enable scientists to measure critical tsunami generation and propagation characteristics, and these studies have provided the inputs to theoretical models which have successfully replicated tsunami landslide historical observations. Over the last decade, scientists at the U. S. Los Alamos National Laboratory and Science Applications International Corporation have developed a compressible Eulerian hydrodynamic code utilizing adaptive mesh refinement techniques to solve the tsunami generation, propagation, and inundation problem in a single, large, three-dimensional, computer simulation using appropriate grid resolutions and realistic equations to describe the Earth's atmosphere, ocean, and crust. Symposium scientists presented results from models run for the 1958 Lituya Bay, Alaska landslide and tsunami, and tsunamis generated by meteorite or asteroid impacts (http://www.spacedaily.com/news/earthquake-02a.html), that showed remarkable realism and detail.

The possible role of gas hydrates in contributing to slope instability and inducing tsunami generation generated much discussion during the all-day workshop. In addition, a number of papers on tsunami hazards and vulnerability, and tsunami historical events were presented, including studies in Greece, eastern Canada, Indonesia, Cyprus, Aruba, Peru, and the U.S. (Alaska, Hawaii).

Symposium Program and abstracts and recent Science of Tsunami Hazards journals can be accessed online at http://www.sthjournal.org.

The Tsunami Society promotes the awareness and mitigation of tsunami hazards by sponsorship of workshops, meetings and symposia and by the dissemination of knowledge about tsunamis to scientists, officials and the public in part through its international electronic refereed journal. The Society provides a focus for discussion and interactions among its members, government agencies, and the public. During the Tsunami Symposium, The Tsunami Society elected a new slate of officers who will hold office until the Third Tsunami Symposium planned for May 24-26, 2005 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The Society also established an Ad Hoc Committee on Mega-Tsunamis to evaluate currently available data and research efforts in response to recent media attention that erroneously suggested that volcano island flank failures would generate ocean-wide tsunamis capable of devastating densely-populated coastlines at locations distant from the source (e.g., across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans). The Committee, consisting of George Curtis (Chair), Dr. Eddie Bernard, Dr. Laura Kong, Dr. Charles Mader, Dr. Tad Murty, and Dr. George Pararas-Carayannis, will develop a scientifically-based position paper on the occurrences of mega-tsunamis in the past, and the likelihood for such events in the future.

Dr. Tad Murty, Tsunami Society President, presented Dr.George Pararas- Carayannis with The Tsunami Society Award recognizing his outstanding and original contributions to the science of tsunami hazards. Now retired, but still active, Pararas-Carayannis is a former director of the International Tsunami Information Center and co-founder and officer of the Tsunami Society. The Tsunami Society also presented an Award to Tom Sokolowski, current Geophysicist-in-Charge at the U.S. West Coast / Alaska Tsunami Warning Center, for his leadership in the development and evaluation of techniques for real-time prediction of far-field tsunami amplitudes and hazard evaluation.